In the first few decades of modern research in cognitive science, from the 1950s to the 1970s, it
seemed that progress in explaining the mind would come primarily from describing thought in terms
of computational processes independent of their neural underpinnings. But as I sketched earlier in this
chapter and will show in more detail in Chapters 4–8, much of the most exciting current progress in
cognitive science combines experimental studies of the brain with computational models of how it
works. This research suggests that mental processes are both neural and computational, combining the
basic insight of functionalism with the mind-brain identity theory.